Gibson ‘aye,’ Tonko ‘no’ on ‘Keep Your Health Plan Act’

Somewhat predictably, the Capital Region’s two congressmen split along party lines on the just-passed Keep Your Health Plan Act of 2014, which would allow Americans to keep health insurance plans that don’t comply with Obamacare.

Amsterdam Democrat Paul Tonko voted with most Democrats to oppose it, while Kinderhook Republican Chris Gibson — who has several times pushed for an outright repeal of Obamacare — voted with the House’s ruling Republicans for it.

At issue is Obama’s assurances that Americans who liked their health plans could keep them when the new law went into effect — a commitment that turned out not to be true when insurance companies began dispatching millions of cancellation notices for policies that were not AHA-compliant.

Unlike Tonko, who is regarded to be in the fairly safely Democratic 21st Congressional District, Gibson faces a re-election fight next year in the closely-divided 19th Congressional District, which stretches from Rensselaer to Ulster counties and points west.

Here’s Gibson’s statement on the vote:

House Passes Bipartisan Bill to Let Americans Keep Their Health Plan

Washington, DC – The House of Representatives passed today H.R. 3350, the Keep Your Health Plan Act, by a bipartisan vote of 261 -157. Congressman Chris Gibson (NY-19) voted in support of the legislation, which upholds the promise President Barack Obama and then Speaker Nancy Pelosi made that under the Affordable Care Act, if you liked your health insurance plan, you could keep it.

“As I’ve said all along, the Affordable Care Act, which had the right goals of lowering health care costs and increasing access to quality care, would never deliver on these promises. One of these tenets was that my constituents, and Americans across the country, would be able to keep their current health insurance if they liked it. That has turned out to be a false promise, and today’s legislation would fix that – allowing insurance companies to continue to offer current plans,” said Congressman Chris Gibson.

The Keep Your Health Plan Act allows providers to continue to offer in 2014 those health insurance plans in effect in the individual market as of January 1, 2013. The plans will be treated as grandfathered health plans for purposes of Section 1501(b). According to the Associated Press, 3.5 million people on the individual insurance market have already seen their health plan cancelled.